The San Jose City Council Tuesday approved using pieces of property in South San Jose as temporary locations for the unhoused.
However, some neighbors are fighting back and said the area already has a disproportionate number of emergency housing projects.
Resident Izzac Khayo and neighbors fought the plan to put up to 100 tiny homes in one section of the VTA station parking lot on Cottle Road.
"The biggest concern is that there are already several homeless projects and they are all located in the one and a half mile radius," Khayo explained. "Our area has 64% of the projects."
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San Jose has already approved an emergency housing project less than two miles away at the Santa Teresa VTA station.
Neighbors are concerned the additional housing will increase traffic and impact patients and employees who use the light rail to get to a nearby Kaiser Permanente hospital.
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Others are also worried about a possible increase in crime, and the safety of teens who park in the same lot.
"Would you send your 15-year-old girl to that lot to get VTA?'," said San Jose resident Sarita. "I'm not comfortable."
The city council also approved another tiny homes project at the VTA maintenance yard near Zanker Road.
Council member David Cohen said these projects offer support services to the homeless, and have been shown to be successful.
"About two thirds of people who end up in that side, at the end of six months end up locating into other types of housing and don't end up back on the street," Cohen explained. "If we really want to make a dent in our unhoused population, we want to have 1,000 of these units across the city and the idea is to spread them out across the districts."
Neighbors are not convinced.
"Once they are in here, they are here forever. That's the concern," Sarita said.
With the approval, the city will clean up any illegal dumping and assign a liaison to regularly work with neighbors to address their concerns.
